Cellular networks commonly comprise multiple sub-systems, providing multiple modes of communications functionality. For example, cellular devices utilizing the global system for mobile communications (GSM) voice standard are able to use the general packet radio service (GPRS) layer of the network for data communications, as well as the short message service (SMS) for text communications. The varied systems and modes of communication on a network necessitates tracking many pieces of data aggregated from many different sources particularly when troubleshooting. Because tracing on or through selected network elements, collecting information from multiple disparate sources, normalizing such information, and collating it is necessary to get a meaningful understanding of the sequence of events, troubleshooting a network problem tends to be a very slow and laborious process.